So let's see, what going on? Hmmmm....I have two minor date changes to report this week as Bandai Visual shuffles their release schedule around a bit. Super Robot Wars Devine Wars and Freedom 3 have been bumped from Nov 13th to Dec 11th. The good news is that we have completed distribution arrangements with Bandai Visual so that we will continue to receive their new titles. We will also be able to restock their existing titles, so you can now order them with confidence.
There have been two licensing announcements recently that I got really excited about. First ADV picked up Kanon, which is a fabulous Comedy/Drama that was originally an 18+ PC Game and has been way too long coming to the North American market. How do I know that Kanon is fabulous if it's not out yet? - don't ask questions grasshopper... 'some people' say Kanon is one of the best Anime ever made - here's a little taste...
Also, John Sirabella recently announced that Media Blasters has licensed Mahou Shoujo Tai Aris (Tweeny Witches), an Adventure/Comedy from Studio 4C. OP can be seen here.
Both titles should appear on DVD early next year.
It's been 3 weeks now - so what's going on with Geneon? In a word - 'nothing'. If they're working on something they are not giving any hint as to what it is. Despite our best efforts and a huge final reorder we did with them their titles have already started to stockout, and as our original inventory evaporates we've been forced to buy some of their items from middlemen at higher cost just to keep them in stock a little bit longer. I had hoped we could keep their items mostly in stock through the holidays, but instead of the 3x or 4x volume increase I had guessed, it has been something more like 20x so Geneon titles have literally vaporized out of our warehouse. For example, we shipped more volumes of Fate/Stay #6 in 24 hours than in seven weeks for volume #5. Still, we'll do our best to keep these items available as long as we can, even if we have to buy them at a higher wholesale cost. Right now the series that are in the most jeopardy of selling out are Shana, Fate/Stay, Ergo Proxy, Dears, and Girls Bravo. Unless we can find more re-supplies these series may be completely gone by the end of the month.
While I'm discussing industry stuff, I just want to take a bit of time and rant about a certain manga publisher. If you've read me for awhile you know it's no secret that I've had some angst in the past with the way TokyoPop handles their business, and recently has been no exception. Some times I want knock on some of these industry executives heads and ask "hello, is anybody home??!!" :-) I personally do not believe that a manga publisher should allow older volumes of a manga series to go out of print while new volumes are still being released. Economics be damned. Makes it impossible to offer customers value bundles, and also guarantees declining market share for longer running series as newer volumes are released. I also don't believe that a manga publisher should hold certain titles hostage to the marketplace by only making them available directly from the publishers web site. But these are not the only problems. Recently we've had supply issues with TokyoPop titles in that the initial pressings of their books seem to be way too small, so when demand exceeds initial expectations these issues are not readily available for re-order and then can take weeks to restock. Come on TP, you guys can do better for us than this. Nuf said.
Ron (direct from the warehouse) say's that Naruto 17 (Zero Hour) just hit the dock and is being unloaded now. It will be added to the other new arrivals that came in this week like Hell Girl, GSD 11, Flag, and of course, the 2nd volume of Karas. We're offering Karas at 40% off the MSRP to help everyone forget the long wait of nearly 2 years. We had a relatively light week for new manga and figure arrivals, but have started to catch up on new posts and managed to get about 20 new figures up for pre-order. Many more to come in the following days. Finally we posted some of the new music CD's that recently arrived from Tokyo, including the great single by Hikaru Utada from the new Evangelion movie. Check below for the scoop on everything that's come in, or check our updates page for the complete story!
My parting word for you this week is - Otaha!
That's it for this week. Have a great weekend - and ENJOY your Anime! :-)
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